TRIESTE – The Harbour Master of Venice raises the draft quotas for the ports of Venice and Chioggia.
For the Malamocco-Marghera Canal, the new draughts have been raised to 11.5 meters, compared to the 10.5 meters set in 2018 for ships up to 230 meters in length. For vessels between 301 meters and 335 meters, the maximum draft was set at 10.5 meters.
As far as Chioggia is concerned, on the other hand, the new draughts have been set, for the berths of the “Val da Rio”, between 6.5 and 7 meters, while for the berths of the “Saloni”-external Lombardo Canal (C1-C6), the maximum allowed draughts are 7 meters.
The increase in draughts was made possible following progressive maintenance work on the port channels to improve nautical accessibility. The interventions on the Malamocco-Marghera Canal, carried out starting in 2019 and partly still in progress, have allowed the removal of about one million cubic meters of sediment. Following the Mud Protocol of 1993, about 150 thousand cubic meters were used for morphological restoration interventions in the sandbanks, while the remainder were conferred at the Isola delle Tresse, from the Bacino di evoluzione n°3 in Fusina and up to the “curvone” of San Leonardo with an expenditure of about 18.4 million euros.
In Chioggia, on the other hand, the excavations removed approximately 45 thousand cubic meters of sediment (all conferred at the Isola delle Tresse) at the cost of roughly 990 thousand euros.
«Nautical accessibility is an essential element for the development of ports in general and even more so for the Veneto port system, which has such peculiarities, both from a maritime-operational and an environmental point of view, as to require a strong push towards innovation… Attracting traffic for the development of the Venetian ports should not be considered as an antithesis to the protection of the lagoon, but rather as a component of a possible balance,» commented Fulvio Lino Di Blasio, president of the North Adriatic Sea Port Authority.